Watch a Michael Jackson Hologram Moonwalk at the Billboard Music Awards

Like Tupac Shakur before him, the King of Pop returned to the stage at Sunday's Billboard Music Awards thanks to the latest hologram technology

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An artist’s legacy is no longer measured by album sales, posthumous releases or fan pilgrimages to childhood homes — it’s whether or not the deceased performer is resurrected in hologram form.

Two years after the Coachella music festival featured a three-dimensional light display of Tupac Shakur, a ghostly hologram of Michael Jackson took the stage at Sunday night’s Billboard Music Awards to perform “Slave to the Rhythm,” a track off his recent posthumous release, Xscape.

Though producer Timbaland’s fingerprints are all over the song’s contemporary remix, the Michael Jackson hologram was clearly programmed to be a classic crowd-pleaser — just watch him moonwalk like it’s 1983 all over again.